Dear Editor,

I am fast approaching 67 years and have seen a lot in my time. I am troubled about what I see emerging in Jamaica today. The government has been given a free hand to do and say what it wants with no vocal Opposition, media and civic organisations saying anything much.

It seems also that in a time of great crisis, hardly anyone in the current government is speaking up with any clear direction. Worse yet, my own friends of varying political persuasions hold the view that the country has gone adrift.

Speaking volumes is Clovis's cartoon last week with former G2K President Delano Seiveright urging the new President Floyd Green not to become silent. It is obvious to me that there is in fact an institutional bias of sorts that favours the PNP. This has always been the case, but I have never seen it this bad.

I ask myself why no one is talking heavily about the messy economic state of affairs that we are in and putting the same amount of pressure that they had put on the previous government to straighten things out. And why can I not hear or see robust debates on the plans by the respective new government ministers on the direction of their ministries? The silence is deafening and the Opposition deserves a whole lot of blame for this. Barring a few, I hardly hear from them. What is the sense of having eight senators, for example, if they are all as silent as a church mouse?

If we continue on this track, the government will just do what it pleases with neither Opposition, media or civic organisations to check and balance them. Jamaica cannot be the better for this.

Carlton Reid

Kingston 19

carltonamreid@hotmail.com